Salad
History Childhood Salad was born in the Corpse Coast, some twenty-two years ago to a Corpse mercenary named Bubblegum (who, keeping with the family tradition of naming their children after food, dubbed the new child "Salad") and his bought and paid for tribal wife Sleeping Raccoon. Salad's birth came as a slight surprise to his father, who spent most of his time away fighting in the War Games within The Corpse. Salad grew up mostly in the presence of his mother, Sleeping Raccoon, who stayed in a small shack on the outskirts of The Corpse while his father fought inside of the city for (sometimes) weeks at a time before returning home with more money and food for his family. As a result of being the only "man" of the house for most of his childhood, Salad was forced to develop into a much more mature individual than others his age might have. He often worked around the house without being asked to, and preferred to do things by himself rather than have anybody help him. He was, by all accounts, a "good" kid who worked hard around the house and attempted to do right by his parents. His early childhood was rather calm for someone who lived on the doorstep to violence. He knew what was happening in the Corpse, and knew what his father did for a living, yet he didn't actually grow up in it. Rather, he was only exposed to it from the stories his father brought back and the sounds of the gunfire from inside of the Corpse ringing late into the night from a skirmish closer towards their shack on the northern outskirts of The Corpse. His father spoke frankly to Salad what was going on into the Corpse, and the two often had late night discussions while his father prepared to head back out, Salad asking questions and Bubblegum answering frankly while telling stories about what happened last time. However, his father made it clear to Salad that he didn't want to see him follow in his footsteps as a mercenary. Rather, Bubblegum was saving up money for Salad to become a farmer rather than a hired killer. Bubblegum often beat his son in an attempt to make his son hate him and, thus, make him hate the job that he did. Despite the beatings that Bubblegum forced (which Bubblegum hated doing but, in his mind, was necessary in order to save his son) Salad still, at the very least, respected his father. He may not have loved him, but, he still speaks fondly of him as if they were old friends rather than family members. Teenaged Gunman When Salad was at the age of thirteen, his family received news that his father had been wounded in a Skirmish with another warband within the City. A few days late, a few of his father's friends brought him home on a stretcher. He has been shot in the knee and in the hip, rendering him unable to walk. The family didn't have enough money in order to start up any other sort of trade, and the land they lived at wasn't suitable enough for farming. Salad, overhearing the late night discussions between his parents over finances, decided that he could do something. Without telling his parents, he took his father's old combat gear and weapons and left in the direction of The Corpse in order to make money the only way he really knew how it could be made; the way his father did it. Salad was, however, quickly ambushed by a group of Annavile Reds, who quickly stripped the young boy of any weapons and equipment and sent him with other press-ganged conscripts on their infamous "retreating advance" against a group of Callehan Blacks. It was the first time that Salad had been exposed to any sort of violence, aside from the half-hearted beating his father doled out, and it shocked him. As other conscripts were charging or dying all around him, both from the Reds' and the Black's bullets, Salad wandered aimlessly through the killzone until the firing stopped. Unbeknownst to Salad, who had become quite shell-shocked from the entire experience, the rest of the conscripts managed to hack their way through the Calallen Blacks lines and escape, sans Salad. As the other conscripts escaped through the hole in the line just created, the Reds advanced through the ruins. Most ignored the dazed boy, and a few suggested they take him as a slave. One Anaville Red, an older veteran named Jeffery Rabinowitz, however, approached the boy and led him away from the ruins. Most assumed that Rabinowitz was taking the young Salad as a sex slave and ignored the two. Instead, Jeffery brought Salad back to the local camp the Anaville Red's were currently staying at and fed him. Jeffery revealed that, unless Salad joined up with the Anaville Reds as a fighter, then he would sell the child into slavery. Salad, preferring to live rather than die, chose to take up the gun. Joining Rabinowitz's group, the thirteen-year-old Salad became a mercenary child soldier. What followed next is, for lack of a better terms, utter darkness. From thirteen to twenty, a total of seven years, Salad fought for the Anaville Reds. He transformed from a scared child soldier who could barely (mentally) pull the trigger on someone who regularly shot press ganged conscripts in the back. He stayed in Rabinowitz's during his entire seven-year term of service with the Reds, and the two developed a strange relationship. Rabinowitz and Salad acted almost like brothers, with Rabinowtiz becoming the more abusive older brother and Salad becoming the more passive younger brother in the pair. The relationship was almost borderline sexual at times, and rumor has it the two did actually engage in some sort of sexual intercourse when the two were alone at the camp. Some suspected that this was Salad's way of giving some sort of "thank you" to Rabinowitz for not selling him into slavery (as Rabinowitz's own sexuality was under question by his comrades). Salad, due to the Red's aggressive nature, found himself fighting nearly every day of his seven years that he served with the Red's. The warfare changed who he was, right down to his very personality. He became a master at urban warfare, and found himself fighting nearly every kind of foe the Reds could face. Green, Blue, Black, or other smaller warbands. If it had, at one point or another, shot at the Anaville Reds than Salad killed them. Not only engaging in the "War Games" that made the Corpse famous, Salad also engaged in various massacres against outsiders. Homesteaders, merchants, random travelers. Salad took slaves, and raped several of them when he had the chance to. He shot press-ganged conscripts in the back, despite the fact that's what he started out as. He had become a merciless killer, willing to turn his gun on nearly anybody in exchange for money. Throughout all of this, Salad himself was being brutalized. He himself was often beaten by older members of the Anaville Reds, especially when he was younger, to make him into a brutal killing machine. Food and water were withheld from him for, occasionally, days at a time if he didn't follow every order during a mission. All of this damaged and fractured his mind, along with the constant warfare that he faced. By the time he had turned twenty, the Salad that many knew when they were younger was no more. He had transformed into a, for a lack of a better term, a heartless monster. Prisoner Salad and his unit were ordered to join with several larger units of Reds in an attempt to push out the Blacks from a nearby area. It was definitely one of the larger battles Salad had been involved in, with several hundred combatants total. As the Reds advanced through the ruins, nearing their objective and sticking to the alleyways to avoid the snipers that watched the main street, a series of explosions took out part of the foundations of a nearby ruined four-story building. The resulting explosion caused the building to collapse on top of the Reds. Although most were able to escape as the building toppled on top of them, the two groups had been effectively cut in half from one another. The Calallen Black ambush that followed finished off what the falling building could not. Salad managed to escape from the kill-zone, but, only after pretending to be dead. Hiding himself underneath a comrade's body, he managed to escape the bullet spray that followed when the Blacks attempted to make sure that everybody was dead. Emerging from underneath his comrade's body several hours later, Salad found himself alone in the city. Having spent the past several years moving around in the city in a squad-level formation and having ambushes loners several times before, Salad quickly recognized the danger that he was in. Grabbing clothing from several of the causalities, Salad created an outfit that disguised his past affiliations with the Reds. Salad attempted to head to the The Lexxx, in an attempt to link up with more members of the Reds. In route to The Lexx, he actually came across a caravan heading away from The Lexx. Unbeknownst to Salad, several members of the caravan actually recognized Salad from several of his attacks on caravans in the past. Alerting their guards, they quickly captured Salad and brought them with him to face trial for the various massacres he committed against caravans. As the caravan trailed out of the Corpse Coast with Salad being trailed behind with his hands bound by rope and the rope attached to the rear caravan, it was almost certain that Salad would be executed at the first town they stopped by. However, in some strange twist of fate, the first town they had visited was infected with some strange disease forcing the caravan to continue on its journey. En-route to the next town, the caravan was attacked by a group of Giant Radscorpions. The caravan was hit hard by the Giant Radscorpions. Many of the caravaners died in the attack, as did many of the brahmin used to haul their carts. Salad himself was nearly killed by a Giant Radscorpion, before the Giant Radscorpion was attacked by a group of guards. During the frantic melee with the creatures, Salad managed to get a hold of a dead guard's knife and used it to cut his rope bonds. Escaping quickly, Salad hid out in the wasteland until nightfall and returned to the caravan to find most of the guards had died in the attack and those that did not die fled. Collecting what weapons, armor, ammunition and gear he could from the corpses and the wagons, Salad set off into the wastes in an attempt to find a future for himself. Category:Characters Category:Mercenaries